|
Peter Trigg (1945-2007)
Our beloved dad, husband, son, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend, is now unbelievably gone from our lives. I don't know how we'll live without him. He touched so many lives with his kind manner and humor, and the world is now a much sadder place without him. He truly was a gentleman and a scholar.
For the obituary written and compiled by the family, visit Peter Trigg (1945-2007). There you will also find links on the service and hotel information and an area for you to leave stories about Peter for the family.
|
Peter Johnston Trigg, of Sarasota, Florida, a lifelong newspaperman, died after battling lung cancer for 3 1/2 months at the M.D. Anderson Clinic in Orlando, Florida, at 4:40 P.M. on June 9, 2007, at the age of 61. He retired in September, 2001, after working 27 years for the New York Times (NYT), thirteen of those for the Times-owned paper, the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
“He was a man of so many facets… incredibly imaginative… He was everybody’s tech go-to guy,” said Laurence M. Paul, Executive Editor of the New York Times News Service and Syndicate.
“He was wonderfully thoughtful and patient… besides his expertise, it’s really the heart that resonates,” said Tom Carley, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at the New York Times.
Trigg worked for the New York Times Company in New York since 1987 where he was constantly involved in the latest technological innovations for the company. His first involvement for the Times was as one of the founding editors of the NYTRENG Wire (New York Times Regional Newspaper Group), where the combination of his strong editorial skills and strong technical knowledge helped make the concept of uniting the 35 Times-owned regional newspapers a reality. While at the Times he also launched the Computer Graphics Service and “it was his genius that helped create [this service],” said former New York Times employee Robert Farnell. He also worked to help found the first foreign language edition of the Times in partnership with the Moscow News in 1992.
In 1995, the Times was at the forefront in launching vertical websites. They had partner newspapers whose content they had rights to, and so they repackaged the content into different websites including “Your Health Daily” and the most successful, “Computer News Daily”. Trigg was “extremely instrumental on the technical aspects [of this project]” said Pat Vance, former employee of the New York Times.
Trigg was born June 22, 1945, in Richland, Washington, the only son of Edwin McKeon Trigg and Adelaide Caroline Marston Trigg of Mobile, Alabama. He attended St. Mary’s Catholic School in Mobile, and was also an altar boy at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. In Savannah, he graduated from Benedictine Military School in 1963.
He attended college at Armstrong State College in Savannah, the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, and Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Trigg had been a newspaperman all his life, starting out as a copy boy at the Savannah Morning News while in high school. While attending college at UGA, he worked as a photographer and reporter for the Athens Daily News alongside Lewis Grizzard and where he also met his future wife, Julie Edith Whitehead of Watkinsville, Georgia. Trigg and Ms. Whitehead were married in Athens, Georgia, on June 25, 1966.
Trigg later worked at the Savannah Morning News as a reporter and then as Bureau Chief of Beaufort, South Carolina, for the Savannah Morning News. He then worked as the Bureau Chief of Titusville, Florida for the Orlando Sentinel Star (now Orlando Sentinel). He was promoted in early 1973 to Assistant Managing Editor for the Orlando Sentinel Star. Later in the 70s, he and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, where he took the position of Assistant News Editor at the Sarasota Herald Tribune. He later worked as Metro Editor and Projects Editor before accepting a position in 1987 as Assistant Graphics and Text Wire Editor for NYTRENG at which point he and his family relocated to Brooklyn, New York. That same year he was then made Director of Computer Graphics for the NYT News Service and in that role launched the Computer Graphics Service. He worked until 1993 in that position when he was made Director of Photo and Graphics Delivery Services for the NYT News Service. In the mid-1990s he was promoted to Communications Director of the NYT Syndicate. While there he recognized the need for an integrated systems department for the Times company and in 2000 this department was created and Trigg was made the Manager of the News Services and Marketing Services Production Systems from which position he took an early retirement in September of 2001. He then went back to his newspaper roots and worked freelance for the State Desk at the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
Trigg grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and Savannah, Georgia. He came from a family of newspapermen. His great-grandfather, Daniel Trigg of Abingdon, Virginia, was an editor of the Abingdon Standard in the late 1800s. Another great- grandfather, John Lawrence Rapier, owned the Mobile Register, while Rapier’s brother, Thomas Gwynn Rapier, was a manager of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
His Trigg ancestors were pioneers to Virginia in the 1650s and so he is descended from many Virginia families, including William Byrd of Westover and Robert “King” Carter, making him a cousin of Robert E. Lee. Trigg’s namesake was Judge Peter Johnston, who fought in the Revolutionary War alongside “Lighthorse” Harry Lee. His 4th great uncle was General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, and he was also a descendant of the sister of Patrick Henry of Revolutionary War fame. He was also a descendant of John Floyd, Governor of Virginia 1830-1834, representative from Virginia in the U.S. Congress, and candidate for U.S. President in 1832. John Johns Trigg and Abram Trigg, brothers of an ancestor, served in the U. S. Congress from 1797-1804. On his mother’s side, he was a descendant of John Winthrop, founding governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Trigg was preceded in death by his father Edwin M. Trigg, and he is survived by his wife Julie, his mother Mrs. Adelaide Trigg of Mobile, his sister Eleanor Winthrop Trigg of Mobile, his sister Mary Marston Trigg Scully of New Orleans, La., his daughter Angela Adelaide Trigg of Atlanta, Ga., and his son John Campbell Trigg of Atlanta, as well as numerous and beloved members of his extended family.
The family will hold a viewing in Mobile, Alabama, for friends and family on Friday, June 15, from 6 P.M. to 7 P.M. at the Radney Funeral Home, 3155 Dauphin Street. The funeral service, officiated by Monsignor Cunningham, will be held June 16, at 11 A.M. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 1453 Old Shell Road, followed by a burial at Catholic Arch Diocese of Mobile Cemetery, 1700 Dr. Martin Luther King Avenue. There will be a reception following the burial for friends and family at “Termite Hall”, the home of his mother and great aunt, and where Trigg grew up in Mobile. The family will also hold a memorial service in Sarasota, Florida in the Fall.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Hubbard House where Trigg and his family lived during his treatments, their “home away from home”, in the name of Peter J. Trigg. The address is: Hubbard House, 29 W. Miller Street, Orlando, Florida 32806.
|
